Burberry Chief Joins Male-Dominated Company

As she moves to head Apple’s retail stores, Angela Ahrendts is set to become one of few women in the company’s upper echelons.

Ahrendts joins Apple next year from Burberry, where she has been CEO. The announcement of her appointment comes as Silicon Valley has been steeped in discussions lately about the role of women in technology leadership and the lack thereof at many high-profile companies.

Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief executive, has been at the center of the latest discussion, following the company’s preparations for an initial public offering, with only one woman listed among executive officers. Various organizations have criticized Twitter for its dearth of women in its top ranks, directors and investors.

Of course, Twitter is not alone. A recent study by UC Davis looking at 400 of the largest companies in California, found few women hold key roles. There is only one woman for every nine men among directors and highest-paid executives, the study said, and almost half of the companies studied have no women at all on their boards of directors. Further, only 6.6% of highest-paid executives at the 128 Silicon Valley companies studies in the report were women.

Vivek Wadhwa, vice president of academics and innovation at Singularity University in San Francisco, chalks this up to sexism.

Others, including Ryan Holmes, founder and CEO of HootSuite Media in Vancouver, British Columbia, say the problem is rooted in the dearth of women studying computer science, which he calls the “backbone of any tech startup.”

Apple was named as one of the companies exemplifying this concern. There are some women sprinkled throughout the vice president level of Apple’s organization, including Katie Cotton, vice president of communications and Rita Lane, who heads operations for some of the company’s products, but none in executive leadership.

The nine executives currently listed on Apple’s Web site as belonging to the senior leadership team are all Caucasian men. Of the company’s eight-person board of directors, only one member is a woman–Andrea Jung, who is also senior advisor to the board of Avon Products.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.

Not that there aren’t some prominent women in Silicon Valley. They include Meg Whitman, chief executive of Hewlett-Packard; Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s CEO; Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook Inc.; and Renee James, president of Intel.

The male-heavy climate at Apple contrasts somewhat with Ahrendts’ time as chief executive at Burberry, where her top lieutenant is a woman–chief financial officer Carol Fairweather – and where three of eight directors are women, including Ms. Ahrendts herself.

At Apple, Ahrendts is taking the newly created position of senior vice president of retail and online stores. She will become a member of the executive team and report directly to Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook.